Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'India should focus more on Export' that was published in Newsband

India should focus more on Export

The Centre has taken a decision to increase customs duty on imports of 19 “non-essential” items. Will this narrow the current account deficit (CAD)? The impact of this tariff increase in paring the import bill and thus containing the CAD is at best going to be short-term and marginal. Also the decision to double import duties on a clutch of consumer durables to 20% could dampen consumption of these products. Already the rupee’s slide against the dollar is already likely to have made these goods costlier.

A more robust approach in addressing the widening CAD would be to institute wide-ranging measures to boost exports and simultaneously reduce the import-intensity of the economy. Ensure that export growth starts outpacing the expansion in merchandise imports.

Hiking the import duties is surely not a very effective solution. It attracts counter hikes in retaliation by other nations. Efforts must be focused to push up exports to reduce CAD. At the same time production and employment opportunities require to be generated further to boost up the economy.

The hyped 'Make in India' should have been 'Export, Export from India". We now know Make in India is for special big-ticket zone. Secondly, no member of the Team had ever discussed or commented or self-praised to have helped in facilitating exports. Only agenda is on trivial issues: what to eat, what to sing, what to celebrate.  As highlighted, with tariff-war underway, many countries in SE Asia have wooed factories from China to their shores offering incentives etc.

The centre must avoid these knee-jerk reactions, instead focus on proper well-thought-out and then implemented measures to tackle the perennial inflating CAD.

While on one side our nation is engrossed in such unnecessary controversial fights on Ayodhya/Sabarimala/Adultery/Hindi with almost zero scientific and economic sense/values, on the other side, India (with its leaders having very poor understanding of the Strengths) is seen wasting over 99.5% of our superb resources.

India must immediately work on OWN RESOURCES indigenous development, so that imports and dependence on outside technologies are averted. VALUE ADDITION of Resources would be the key to so-called CAD. There is also need to nurture Brain-power utilization to stem the migration of educated youngsters to outside nations.